Kavin Bharti Mittal, the 27-year-old founder and CEO of Bharti, Softbank-backed Hike Messenger, said he is exploring the possibility of integrating e-commerce with his instant messaging app.NEW DELHI: Kavin Bharti Mittal, the 27-year-old founder and CEO of Bharti, Softbank-backed Hike Messenger, said he is exploring the possibility of integrating e-commerce with his instant messaging app. Mittal - son of billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises - said, going forward, the company's coupon app Hoppr and gaming app Tiny Mogul Games will be integrated to unify all three verticals under one brand Hike.

"Our mission is to build much more than just a texting app. It makes sense for us to consolidate everything under one brand. Now, we have coupons, games, news, scores, that's one big change we are making today as we speak. This is just a beginning of what we call phase two or three in Hike's journey," said Mittal.

Mittal launched Hike, Bharti Softbank's first mobile app, in 2012. At present, the app has around 17 million active users. "China's WeChat has an e-commerce model. The question is what e-commerce looks like on a messaging app. You don't want to build the exact same things available with Flipkart and Snapdeal. We believe commerce on mobile has to be far more curated because the screen you have on a phone is small compared to a desktop. No one seems to have done a good job on that so far. So, we are working on few ideas that will help us deliver more curated content and goods to people," said Mittal.

Mittal will launch a 360-degree marketing campaign for Hike's new identity in the coming months. To take on rivals like WhatsApp, he is betting on highly localised content including stickers in regional languages for Hike.

Mittal understands the current drawbacks of the Indian market. "Half the market doesn't have a phone, so India has a long way to go. Hopefully, 4G and cheaper devices will help that. There are only 1.5% of the devices that are 4G. We've met people from Foxconn and prices of devices will come down by early next year. We are building for that," he said and added, "We still have most of the cash from the last round, but we will evaluate where we stand in the next six months and will take it from there."